Sixteen Again RevisiTed

On January 11, 2015, I posted a story in my blog entitled "Sixteen Again" about a significant experience of mine back in 1961.  Faced with an opportunity that didn't happen very often, I used all the courage I could muster to ask a pretty blonde girl from Minetto for a date.  She accepted.  All went very well on the date until the very last moment.  

For an unexplained (by her) reason, when we returned (after dancing and dining) to her house, she got out of the car, ran to the door, opened and closed (herself behind) it before I got there to say good night.  She refused to speak to me ever again.  What had I done to deserve that?

The only plausible explanation is my decision to give a ride to my Minetto friend, Warren Bickers, who was hitchhiking at the corner of West First and Utica, created some kind of a horribly  embarrassing situation for her, for which she blamed me to eternity.

Afterwards, I focused on her rejection of me at the end, instead of the other 99% of the date.  Instead of realizing she had and thus other girls would also accept a date with me (one wrote in my yearbook "Don't keep your nose in a book; it's too cute to be in there."), I focused on her rejection at the end.  Instead of realizing the ease with which I conducted myself with her during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end.  Instead of realizing how much she was enjoying herself during the date, I focused on her rejection at the end.    

There is an old expression, "If you fall off a horse, you get back up."  I didn't take such sage advice.  That date, in the first half of my junior year, would be my one and only during my high school days.  I permitted the ghastly fear of rejection to control my behavior for the next two years until my Penn roommate Mike Parr arranged a date for me with Phyllis Green, a Temple coed.

If I had focused on the positive side of that date instead of the negative, how my life could have changed?  I was on the cusp of developing social self-confidence, which I lacked before then.  But my reaction to the end of that date crushed my fragile ego for years to come.

My two children never lacked for social self-confidence during their formative years.  Why?  I believe it was because their mother and I worked hard to instill it in them.  On the other hand, I suffered because nobody did that for me during my youth.  

When I graduated from college in 1967, I decided to move to Michigan where my brother Ted and his wife lived because, lacking social self-confidence, I knew my sister-in-law would arrange many opportunities for me to meet young women.  That's how I met my first wife.

If back in 1961 I had used that date experience in a positive way, I could have developed into a socially self-confident young man who would not have needed any such assistance in Michigan.  I would have preferred to remain in Philadelphia after graduation, a city I had grown to love during my four years at Penn.  What a different direction my life would have gone?  I'll never know.